Blast from the past: Play Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man in your web browser

You can keep your Xbox One and Playstation 4. Save Call of Duty, Forza 5 and Titanfall for the kids.

If your first memories of gaming involved joysticks, plastic cartridges and faux-wood consoles, you will want to check out the Internet Archive, which has just made hundreds of console games from the 1970s and 1980s available to play online.

Even if you weren't around in these pre-Playstation days, you find yourself surprisingly entertained by the simple precursers to todays glitzy blockbusters.

The site dedicates itself to preserving online resources - old websites, software, video and text dating back as far as the internet itself. Its collection of archived web pages stands at 2 petabytes of data, and grows by 20 terabytes a month.

Now the Archive has uploaded games from five early games consoles - the Atari 2600, Atari 7800 Prosystem, ColecoVision, Magnavox Odyssey and the Astrocade.

There are dozens of games available, including classics such as Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Frogger. You don't need to download anything to play - the games should open in your browser.

We've picked five of the best: one from each console to help you procrastinate your way into the New Year.

On the Atari 2600: BattlezoneVector graphics give this a primitive 3D feel, as you fight enemy 'supertanks' and flying saucers in the year...1999!

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On the Atari 7800: Alien BrigadeSomething of a theme emerging here: this side-scrolling shooter sees you fighting off an alien invasion, including brainwashed civilians.

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ColecoVision: Donkey Kong (Super DK)Coleco licensed Donkey Kong from Nintendo and shipped it with consoles, using the game's popularity to sell 6million units. It's one of the classics of early videogames, and is nearly identical to the arcade version.

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On the Magnavox Odyssey: Killer Bees!Known in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, this box didn't have the graphics or top titles of Atari's later offerings. Nevertheless, there are some classics lurking, such as the wonderfully named Killer Bees!

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On the Astrocade: GalaxianGalaxian showed advanced AI for its age, with enemies that converge on your position at random.